Skip to main content

Tempting Christ: Luke 4

The fourth chapter of the book of Luke describes the temptation of Christ in the wilderness. Since we are all Christ, we all endure this in various ways: 

1 Then Jesus, remembering that He was Christ and fully Divine, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into a place of lack and hunger 2 so he could be tempted for this time. He had nothing that could fulfill his need, and afterward his need was great.

3 And the tempter said to Him, "You can't really be Christ if you feel so low and down and needy. If you were really Christ, you could provide everything for yourself easily!"

4 But Jesus answered him saying, "It is not what I do that makes Me Christ, but who I AM."

5 Then the tempter, seeing the great need and lack that Christ was walking in, took Him up to a high mountain and showed Him the answer and fulfillment to every one of his needs. 6 Then the tempter said to him, "I will give you everything you need. I will love and support you. I will build you up. You will not hunger anymore. You will not hurt anymore. But there is an ultimatum: you have to not be Christ anymore. I will be your authority, your Christ. 7 You must submit to me, and it will all be yours."

8 And Jesus answered and said to him, "No freaking way! I am Christ and I cannot be other! It is written, 'You will not demean yourself and submit your own sovereignty to another!"

9 Then the tempter brought Him to Jerusalem, brought Him to the highest heights of religious worship and said to Him, "If you are Christ the Lord, submit to the established religious theology by proving to the people who worship under this religion that you are Christ, 10 you must fulfill what is written in their religious text: 'He shall meet your needs and not allow harm to come to you' 11 and 'even your basest needs shall be met and you shall not be hurt.'"

12 And Jesus answered and said to Him, "It has been said, 'You shall not confine the Christ expression of who you are to a religious theology or understanding!'"

13 Now when the tempter had ended all this temptation, he departed from Him until the next time He had a need.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why Creation Isn't Waiting For You to Rule and Reign

There's this idea that creation is waiting for the sons of God to take their places and make the world what it needs to be, this idea that some day out there Yahweh will come back and take us to Heaven and reign from His Throne. Once we remember sovereignty and that we are One with Yahweh, we realize that we are the ones sitting on this throne with Yahweh. We also need to remember that time and eternity are One. Time is the instrument of Our growth, and We actually use it to grow eternity. Once we realize these two things, we can see that We are sovereign in our own lives and ruling and reigning from this throne right now. The instrument of Our dominion is Our choices. This is what Paul talked about in 1 Corinthians 3 where he talks about how we each choose what materials to build our lives with. Some choose jewels, some choose clay. I, as the sovereign in my own life, get to decide what materials to build my life with. However, I cannot judge another's life. As each of u

The Seven Circles of Katalambano

Katalambano is a Greek word, which I found in my Bible and which you can examine more  here . Of course, Yahweh is all that there is, so some of the idea of overcoming needs to be rethought. What are we overcoming? We overcome the questioning (mentioned in the blog post "The Trinity of Faith") and answer yes and amen to Yahweh. Katalambano means two important things to me. Besides "overcome," it is also used to mean "lay hold of" or "attain." It is the word used in Philippians 3:12 when it talks about pressing on to "lay hold of" that for which Christ Yahshua "laid hold of" me. It is also used in John 1:5 where it talks about the light shining in the darkness and the darkness did not "overcome," or in some versions "comprehend" it. It is through katalambano that we grow our Promise, attain a new portion of it, complete our creation. Everything that exists is 3, 7, and 12, so you might call this the se

How the Grinch Didn't Steal Anything

You know how the Grinch tried to stop Christmas from coming, and yet it came anyway? Nothing he did could stop Christmas, whether it be taking the traditions, the decorations, the gifts. He took away the familiar and the sacred, but those silly little Whos were able to recognize Christmas when it came anyway, though it had a different form than maybe it had had in the past. What is Christmas, anyway? We all know the story of how Yahweh sent His Son to the Earth as the greatest gift of all for mankind. He sent Him completely, not reserving or holding anything back, and no matter how King Herod or circumstances tried to keep Him from coming, He came anyway, in a place and form that nobody expected a King to come, let alone the Messiah of Israel and Savior of the world. How many people try to stop the Love of Yahweh from overtaking them in their lives? For whatever reason--usually some form of fear or a misunderstanding that can manifest in anger or resentment--they flee from the Love